Nine
by Kaitsurinu
Summary: 12, Oneshot In which Duo finds a human voice is not stronger than a human choice, and some rings of Hell are preferable to others.


Nine

By Kaitsurinu

* * *

_I know you don't want to do this._

He reads the look in my eye with the same speed and same knowing disdain of mission files and continues on. Somehow the color of his brow and his dark-ringed eyes reminds me of a coffin and the shape of his lips of the lid kissing the bottom as it closes. There is a defiant breath between us when he moves past and an empty highway between his stare and mine. The frustrating part is the unwavering gaze. He has the unending nerve to look me in the eye and refuse to listen? Well, fuck him too.

So I square my shoulders and let my eyes speak louder, holding my breath this time to emphasize their words of color and tension. _You don't want to do this_. It travels across the silent cords of our eyes and the Prussian blues only retain their dark diplomatic strategy of isolation. He refuses any answer and his body keeps the oath. Not a twitch of his brow, not a quirk of his lips, nor a glitch in the stare. I spit out my breath with a hiss.

He breaks our eyes to turn and pull a thin cotton shirt from the top drawer. The silence is actually killing him, for if I could speak I would scream at him to save himself. But to do so would to be kill us both and rend all the anxiety over retaining life worthless. So with the patience of a saint and the pain of a wolf-eaten man I watch him pull a flimsy little shirt over his flesh to hide the thick black belt around his waist.

Unable to give it another moment of my eyes, I watch instead his hipbone and stretched stomach of skin the color of parchment. _Oh,_ I say to his thin, built little hips, _tell your brain you're not done living. You've hardly procreated at all. Tell him that._

A sigh rolls out of me, hungry and despairing, and he ignores it. He has to set his jaw to do so—I see the skin of his face tighten slightly and his nose lift marginally in the sunlight. Through the weeks his hair has grown long and concealing, shyer, and into the most luscious color I can never describe exactly. It's terracotta and dark chocolate and dirt and cappuccino powder, all in the shape of lonely and lovely. The shape of Saturday morning children in bed and the shape of a drug runner with full, musical veins. It hangs down, tickling, and hides his eyes from the world—and therefore, he is further from it, and me, as well.

Maybe it's just because I've noticed color more since I fell in love with him. But I see them so vividly I could reach out and take a bite, and choke on their sheer weight.

It's this apartment, maybe, that's giving him this ridiculous thought this is a good idea. This silent ring of hell. The tenth—for those who don't speak in time.

More rooms surround the thin walls that close us in, and house people who might find strangers and one very dead neighbor fodder enough to bother the authorities. And we don't want to let them know they're going to die until we simply do it. To speak is to fail, and the mission parameters demands either victory or blood. So we don't. Strict personnel silence. I'm not allowed any last words to him.

And that's killing _me_.

His nose is traditional like Kyoto, the carved beams of a shrine gate, and the color of the cappuccino I made this morning. His eyebrows—of what I have seen when he falls asleep and his hair falls back, an innocent, sea blue-green—are dark, Ardennes forest black, brown, and taps of green. And his neck is white, of course, for a swan's neck.

He told me once that good ballet looks like a swan dying. And he dies with the same grace now, mixed with a good, healthy portion of stubbornness.

He touches the ammunition shells filled with ball bearings and jagged metals with an inhuman lack of anything. He attaches them to his hip as his living shroud even more so. It's absolutely insane. It would make the Mad Hatter scream in confusion. I'd like to criticize him for his overconfidence in the orders of men we have never seen, his arrogance in movements, embracing his death, or his overly controlled face and emotions, but he simply has none. No mortal leash linking him to the world of pain and horror but also of life and summers.

He's going to die.

_You're going to die_, I tell the back of his head. _Why don't you think about that, huh?_ _Instead of what position on your body that belt will inflict the most death and carnage?_

Silence is the rule as he picks up the loaded glock and adjusts the leather straps of his holster around his shoulders before sliding it in in some tantalizing metaphor I dare not color further.

_So you'll just let go of it? Because that's how the letters appeared in an encrypted, anonymous message? _

The glowing, golden sunlight that closes around him when he steps in front of the window, back squarely turned on me, enveloping him like a blanket just inches too small, say _yes_. The silences say _yes_. His defiance shines a hot, gentle white yellow and curls around the top of his head in a martyr's corona. His hand reaching off to the side for a sweatshirt to curl around his explosive body and soul—without turning his head to even glance me from the corner of his eye—tells me _yes_.

_You'll _freaking _blow yourself up because someone said to? Someone you don't even know says die, and you lay down like a dog? You? You haven't even lived enough to be given your own name. What makes you think life's done with you? _

He turns finally now and puts arrows into his eyes like the sun while it rains. His expression is putrid red frustration. He's been listening. _It is an order. It is for the _cause.

He leaves the sweatshirt on the table behind him before crossing the room with silent feet and swearing but muted eyes. He stops inches from me, making all the color in me stick to the back of my ribs like shaved iron to a magnet. Oh, he's pissed. I just _won't_ quit talking, will I? Well, good.

_And neither have _you _been given a name_, say his eyes.

I tighten my fist around my chest where my necklace lies. _I made mine. There's a difference. _

He tilts his head, though the severe lines will not leave to admit defeat. _I chose mine. _He touches the middle of his forehead to show me. _Doesn't that count for anything?_

I move my mouth defiantly around a word dangerously close to sound and emotion. _You're not doing a lot of choosing otherwise, are you?_

I wait for fire, I wait for storm clouds, I wait for any typical cliché of emotion to enter his eyes, which, by their color, could hold every one ever experienced, but will not give up any. Only his lips slightly tightening against each other like the dual nature of the human spirit and a slight tightness in the sides of his face. To make up for the silence, he pushes his body further towards me, telling me,_ Just let it go. There's nothing that can be done_.

I don't like the way he looks down at me from his slight advantage in height—the top of my head just high enough to brush the tip of his nose—and I reach forward through what feels like a solid concrete wall to touch his chest. Purposely, though it burns my fingertips to do so, I hesitate. I wait.

_What are you doing?_ His eyes demand me to answer, the color of the ball bearings rattling in the belt around his waist. The color of death, which was only twenty-nine cents per ounce at the hardware store this morning. I couldn't help but wonder what he thought when he watched the green numbers jump and the register issue its metallic laughter, rating the value of his life at only five dollars and thirty nine cents. Couldn't he feel anything, not an ounce of degrading humor or even the tiniest phone call of fear from some corner of his mind? Did he not feel defeat, holding out his hand for the receipt for his own fate?

_You're going to die_, I mutter in my eyes, looking down, hoping he won't hear. _What _should_ I do?_

Though I know nothing will stop him if there truly is nothing in that stare but cold communication, I will through my fingertips all the emotions of humanity I can think of. His warm body seems to push back against my grip, but he doesn't push the touch away. Then, curling my face into an ugly mix of anger and terrified misery, I shove him as hard as I can. I want _him_ angry. I want _him_ miserable.

He stumbles from the push. He's never stumbled. Eyes the color of a dark, tossing sea and the shape of bullets turn on me, surprised. And while he reels slightly, I ready my own weapons. _I will not let this happen_, says my entire body, especially, though, when I open my mouth.

"There are nine rings of Hell, Heero," I say, relishing every forbidden vibration my voice makes to form the words. "Don't do this. You can join me in the ring for traitors. I won't join the one for cowards."

"Duo—" he hisses, charging back at me, using his step and his expression to pressure me into silence.

"No, fuck you! I will not be quiet while you die!" And with that, I put all my terrorist strength and every ounce of life on the line to lunge at the most dangerous man in the world and grab his hips. I yank him with more force than needed—he has trusted me up until this point to respect his space, but he has never counted on the fact that love is rough and bitter at times. He never really counted on anyone loving him, either. His hips crash with mine and he makes a strangled, low sound, gasping and trying to clamp his mouth down around it. And in that time, biting my lips to ignore the electricity in my veins, I tear furiously at his belt.

I wish it were off. I wish it would explode. I wish he'd either see the light, or just go of here and now and take me with in the carnage. Nothing in the middle. Only a coward would leave me here with a bloodless body, an empty apartment, and the teeth of the world closing in around me to light himself off like a roman candle in the middle of a coffee shop for no goddamn reason. _Because they say so_ is no good reason.

"Duo," he whispers, his body straightening again, even bending around and towards me. I claw at the offending explosive, the little, innocent box of ball bearings, and the top of his blue jeans, hiding a body that never tasted real life. His hands are stronger than mine, but I am determined. He pulls me away from it so many times. I only return again, a little weaker, a little less sure, a little less composed, to try and pull it away from him.

My unhappy, frantic fingers and shaking hands say, _This is not fair, this is not fair, this is _so_ not fair._

I don't realize that I've been resting against his body, my legs intertwined with his as we stand, still touching, until he takes my hands by the wrists and squeezes them hard. I look up to him. Before I can calculate which expression my face would induce him the most lethal dose of humanity, he uses those lips like a coffin to mouth an answer to me. _Life is not fair._

I manage another response before I start to wilt. _"_But _you_ could be," I say in a voice too afraid to try any more. _It's a choice you make_.

He stares at me, but does not move.

And it's only then that I begin to wonder if this is our Hell, and Heero's already been into the shop for a cappuccino I'll never see.

I can only hope he'll make a good choice, and pull him, as hard and entirely as I can, to me. Only hoping he remembers to be human when I put my mouth on his and my arms around his back.

* * *

the end.

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End file.
